A date algorithm problem caused between 20 and 30 StorageTek Iceberg disk arrays to crash on January 1, as the system was unable to cope with the 1996 leap year. It was as a result of the disk hardware, said Robin Pilcher, European marketing manager for Ramac products at IBM Corp, which has marketed Iceberg as Ramac Virtual Array since last June. The hardware said it was the end of the year, while application software said there was still another day to go, he said. The problem first emerged in Australia, but users were also affected in Europe and America before StorageTek Inc was able to fix all systems, says Helen Wardle, a marketing executive at the firm. There was no damage to stored data, however, says Pilcher. There was no data corruption. It’s just that the system did not respond until the fix had been implemented. Customer outage was two hours maximum, he says.
